What do the following four crises all have in common?
In late 2001 it was revealed that Enron’s reported financial condition (alleged revenues of $101bn the previous year) was sustained substantially by institutionalized, systematic, and creatively planned accounting fraud (ably assisted by Arthur Andersen LLP). Enron has since become a popular symbol of wilful corporate fraud and corruption.
In 2008 large parts of the world suffered as a result of a financial crisis which was subsequently deemed an “avoidable” disaster caused by widespread failures in government regulation, corporate mismanagement and heedless risk-taking by Wall Street, according to the conclusions of a federal inquiry.
In 2009 news of MPs falsifying and fraudulently claiming expenses leaked and was then published by the Telegraph. It was subsequently revealed this practice had gone on for several years.
In 2011 Rupert Murdoch, his son James, Rebekah Brooks and others are feeling the heat of the phone hacking scandal, and much more as what seems like organisation wide appalling leadership and behaviour was revealed on an almost daily basis.
They were all caused (in part at least) by an absence of engagement and therefore a reliance on management seeking to coerce people, to bend others to their will. Behaviour that we know to be wrong goes unchecked as a result of fear, a lack of questioning, and a false belief that “I don’t need to say anything, surely someone else must be flagging this.”
A couple of weeks ago Jonathan Wilson and I were invited to talk at Cass Business School with the Organisational Development Innovation Network (ODiN), about stakeholder engagement. As evidenced by these (and other) examples of management failing, us humans are slow learners. Nevertheless something sometimes comes along and tips the balance, opens the door to different thinking. We hope the recent News International scandal may mark a turning away from management and arrogance, towards more engaging and confident ways of working.
We wanted to expose the audience to different ways of engaging. So we experimented with song, a pecha kucha, a few rounds of world café conversations, and another song to conclude. It was our intention to share useful methods as well as our learning and reflection. We spent a lively afternoon facilitating conversation. Some observations from the afternoon were:
Many managers seem to fear that trying to engage with stakeholders inevitably brings conflict, but I don’t think that has be true, once stakeholders have gone past the initial suspicion that people have that the organisation may be trying to manipulate them. It is a pity that people have learned from unfortunate experience. It is fear that most constrains engaging with stakeholders or indeed anyone.
It is only possible to engage people on their terms, in language and activity that makes sense to them.
People need to feel in control and to feel listened to. They also can work things out, so in practice there are fewer major substantive disagreements than people fear. The time spent in conversation and dialogue listening and exploring is time well spent that leads to wiser, stronger decisions and saves much time and expense later.
Engagement can only ever be invited and earned, never commanded or bought.
The output from the day has been transcribed and is available for you to read at your leisure here. If you have any questions on the document please get in touch.
Jonathan and I are hopeful that much more enjoyable, valuable and sustainable work can and will be done through sincere, invitational and earned engagement. And we believe we (us, you, everyone) have the methods to help us achieve this. And as our experience shows us, the answers are nearly always in the room, and in particular, in the hearts and minds of those closest to the front line. Closest to the customer. What do you think? Has the time come for a more engaging way to work or will coercion once again prevail?
Doug,
Great insight on how world events are impacting our day to day lives and in particular those who are at the coal face in the customer interaction world. As I’m very deeply involved in this area, both as a customer and professionally, I’ve been thinking about this myself and how this weeks latest global meltdown will continue to pile pressure on companies and the people that work in customer service roles, and I’m not at all optimistic.
As we are seeing, the latest response is yet more layoffs in the financial sector as HSBC, Lloyds and Barclays all announce significant redundancies. This has at least a double negative effect. Firstly, on customers, who must be feeling even more cynical about their chances of “enjoying” a great customer experience when already stretched branches and contact centres have even less staff. And as, or more importantly, the staff that are left and who I’m sure will be exhorted to spend even less time with customers and get off the phone as quickly as they can.
We’ve also seen E.ON join the other greedy and short sighted energy companies at the trough to gorge on the rewards of even more unreasonable and unjustified price hikes (where is Ofgen when you really need them?) How are the front line people in these companies going to be able to deal with the latest undeserved backlash they will undoubtedly receive at the hands of their long suffering customers?
Unfortunately for them, their senior leaders have only one mantra – increasing stakeholder value, and despite an almost overwheming body of evidence that shows that developing a strong emotional and empathetic bond with customers is one of the keys to creating a great customer experience and increasing profits, it’s unlikely they will be allowed to play this only really strong card that they have as individuals, and will continue to be contolled and manipulated as you have mentioned.
No doubt they will continue to live in a world where they have to try to explain truly dumb policies, procedures tariffs etc and where Average Handle Time (AHT) will continue to rule as the most important contact centre stat. Individualism and confidence in doing the right thing for the customer ruthlessly suppressed and, as noted in a Times article on Friday, money deducted for toilet time.
However it’s not all doom and gloom and I do know, and fortunately work with, a few organizations that actually get the connection between actually listening and interacting positively with their customers and realize that this in fact a great time to invest in their people and truly have all hands to the pump. Those that can accurately measure “true” customer loyalty and satisfaction, align both compensation and employee fulfillment to meeting these goals and clearly demonstrate a difference to their customers,(as per your plumbing experience) are seeing that their financial results also improve. Quel surprise!
Not quite a revolution, but the unprecedented rise in social media activity across all demographic groups and the increasingly combative UK consumer is beginning to have an effect and senior executives ( as NI has found out) will find there is nowhere to hide and no sand deep enough for their heads.
Nothing deep and meaningful to say (yet) – but can we hear the songs????